In case you don’t want to read it, basically a bride to be wrote to Noel Gay, the management company of Four Poofs and a Piano, of Jonathan Ross fame, asking how much it would cost to hire them for her wedding. The email was duly forwarded on within the company, resulting in an email response to the bride. As follows:

Bride’s email:

"We are getting married on Sunday 30 September 2007 at Wakefield, West Yorkshire. Every week when I tune into Jonathan Ross I say it would be great if they could play at our wedding so here I am to see how much an appearance from 4 poofs would cost. I expect its out of my budget but at least I’ll know I’ve tried!

Look forward to hearing from you."

From ‘Jane’ to ‘Lou’

Dear Lou

Oh dear!

Another …Thank you.

Jane

From ‘Lou’ to ‘Catriona’

another bloody wedding – what’s wrong with people?

Thank you

Lou

From ‘Catriona’ to the bride:

Dear Karen,

Thank you for your interest in 4 Poofs & A Piano. This date looks to be feasible. The boys usually go out for around £4,000 for this sort of thing.

I look forward to hearing from you,

Kind regards, Catriona

The bride, outraged, posted it on a public forum – full of other brides (and presumably potential customers) who were also outraged and quite rightly she replies saying she really didn’t think they meant to leave the insults on there, and includes the link to the topic in the forum. Someone from Noel Gay comes on to make an apology (which most of the readers don’t buy) and the damage is done.

Then I write about it on here and who knows who will read it after that? Which is a perfect example of how powerful word of mouth can be.